What a Child Learns From the Piano
You’ve seen the ads that tout “Research shows kids math scores rise when they play piano.”
There’s always a children’s piano method for sale at the other end of that sentence.
I should know, because I’m one of the guys who created a piano method for kids and owns one of those websites you’re searching right now.
There is one piece of piano research everyone refers to, and I mean everyone from the famed Forbes Magazine article (Sorry Kids, Piano Lessons Make You Smarter) to every well intentioned website I’ve seen that offers some expertise in how to get your child to play piano. I won’t mention any names because that’s not our point today.
Everyone cites the 1997 Gordon Shaw study, a piece of research my own experience bears out as fully correct.
Shaw cites many arcane statistics about the brain, ganglia and neurons. There’s no doubt that music and piano lessons specifically have an effect on kids.
But I’m here to ask, what does all that mean to the child in practical terms?
Exactly what does a child learn from taking piano lessons?
I want to cite finite, real-world terms, not terms that only a scientist can use.
We’ll go in order of what is learned, imagining the youngest of children so that our hypothetical journey can encompass all the steps taken.
First, piano teaches left and right. It’s an issue, like shoelaces, that kids are wrestling with at this point in their lives. The piano keyboard is perhaps an ideal venue for learning this skill.
Next, piano teaches the child that up and down, formerly up to the sky and down to the ground, are now up (right) and down (left.) The point of this is the element of abstraction has been introduced. Left and right and up and down can mean several different things, and for the first time they are asked to make these distinctions. Hard stuff at five or six in front of a big piano.
Soon, the piano teaches the child that they have five distinct fingers, which must be named, numbered, and used like a basketball team. Like any team, they will make mistakes, and will be forgiven. There is no other activity at this age that asks that of a child.
Next, a child must memorize certain motions and observations, even if they are not taught as such: combinations of fingers and the look of the keyboard.
A thousand and one thoughts are necessary to play even the simplest of piano pieces.
In addition, playing any piece requires a predictive ability, that is, the ability to DO one thing while one thinks ANOTHER. Think of baseball: if you have to catch a fly ball, you have to run, and at the same time anticipate catching the ball.
Piano is so full of basic mental gymnastics (up, down, left, right, black, white, fast, slow, loud, soft, long, short) that it can be exhausting to a child if not presented slowly and correctly.
In fact, playing a piano piece becomes rather like a mental juggling act, wherein a series of dazzlingly difficult mental and physical moves are pulled off, one after the other.
To demonstrate this to a child I play a game I call the Attack Tunnel.
In this game, I take a soft object like a large rubber eraser and tell the child I am going to throw it to them, slowly. I then do so, following the child’s eyes so I can throw it directly to them.
If they miss, laugh and try until the catch it. But throw very slowly, making a point of how s-l-o-w-l-y you are throwing.
After they catch it, a slow one or two, tell them that now you will throw it quickly, and then do so.
They will instantly see that they have to be on guard, even more so when the eraser comes faster. Make a game of it. Do it until they keep their eyes on the eraser.
Now throw several objects (erasers) in a row, first slowly, then faster.
On the faster run, they will start dropping the objects and laugh. I explain that this is what the piano is like: problems thrown at you one after the other, and you have to be ready.
Go slowly at first so you learn what will be coming at you. They understand readily because of the demonstration.
I believe these are only a few of the skills that learning the rudiments of piano teaches a child.
And once again, all this is without reading a note of music, which requires yet more difficult-to-acquire skills.
The piano is like an immense blender of abstract physical and mental skills, all of which can be taught in a way that interests and delights children.
John Aschenbrenner is a leading children’s music educator and book publisher, and the author of numerous fun piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER for kids. You can see the PIANO BY NUMBER series of books at http://www.pianoiseasy.com
By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com to see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids.
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